1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to high resolution image printing. More particularly, this invention relates to printing customized high resolution images through a distributed network system having a number of independently administrated service provider systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is known, the rapid growth of the Internet, widespread use of the World Wide Web, and a trend toward deployment of broadband residential networks have led to the development of network printing. A network printing allows a printing job to be performed by a printer remote to a user terminal. In this case, both the printer and the user terminal are connected together via the Internet or Intranet. The printing content (e.g., text and/or images) and the associated printing instructions are transmitted from the user terminal to the printer via the Internet using the open standard network transmission protocol (e.g., the Hyper Text Transport Protocol). The printing instructions typically specify the type of printer used for printing and the printout format.
This prior art network printing allows the user at the user terminal to have his/her printing job done without actually owning the printer. In this case, the printer can be owned by and located at a commercial printing shop (e.g., Kinko""s or PIP printing). The user does not need to spend money and efforts to purchase and maintain the printer. The printer may be a high quality and high speed printer. The user only needs to pay for his use of the printer, not the purchase price of the printer. Thus, the user can actually have his printing job done in a very cost effective manner.
Disadvantages are, however, associated with such prior art arrangement. One disadvantage is that it is typically slow and time consuming to transmit a high resolution image to the user terminal from a remote image server via the Internet, and from the user terminal to a printer via the Internet. As is known, the user terminal is typically connected to an Internet service provider (ISP) system via a relatively slow speed transmission network (e.g., a telephone network) while the ISP system is connected to other ISP systems of the Internet via a very high speed network (e.g., a T-1 or T-3 link). The transmission speed of the telephone network using MODEM is typically 28.8 Kb/second or 33.3 Kb/second while the network between the ISP systems has a data transfer rate of, for example, 1 Mb/second, or 10 Mb/second.
One feature of the present invention is to print a high resolution and high quality image quickly without having an on-site printer.
Another feature of the present invention is to allow a user to receive, view, and customize a low resolution version of an image while printing the high resolution version of the image via a remote printer through a distributed network system.
A method for printing an image in a distributed network system is described. The distributed network system includes an image provider system, a printing service provider system, and a user terminal coupled together via a network. First, a low resolution version of the image is received in the user terminal from the image provider system for viewing. The user can then customize the low resolution image by performing typical image processing operations (cropping, adding text, re-scaling, etc). The low resolution version of the image, once customized, is sent to the printing service provider system. Then the printing service provider system receives a high resolution version of the image from the image provider system such that the high resolution version instead of the low resolution version of the image is printed by the printing service provider system. Once the high resolution version of the image is received in the printing service provider system, the printing service provider system applies the customization to the high resolution image before printing the high resolution image.
A system is described that prints an image in a distributed network system having an image provider system, a printing service provider system, and a user terminal coupled together via a network. The system includes an image server in the image provider system. The image server provides a low resolution version of the image to the user terminal in response to an access request from the user terminal. The system also includes a ticket generator in the user terminal that generates and sends a printing ticket to the printing service provider system if the image is determined to be printed. A print order generator is provided in the printing service provider system to cause a high resolution version of the image to be sent from the image provider system to the printing service provider system based on the printing ticket such that the high resolution version instead of the low resolution version of the image is printed by the printing service provider system.